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Friday, November 30, 2012

CIDRAP : WHO cites 7th coronavirus case, gives surveillance guidance

From Robert Roos atCIDRAP, please click the link for more information on
patient details :

A third case in a family cluster of novel coronavirus
infections has been confirmed, raising the global case count to seven, and the
fourth illness in the family is now listed as a probable case, the World Health
Organization (WHO) has announced.

In a statement dated yesterday, the WHO also
indicated that only one death has been attributed to the novel virus so far,
contradicting a Nov 23 announcement that reported two deaths among the first
six cases.

The WHO also offered new surveillance recommendations
for the novel virus. The agency called for testing of patients in any cluster
of severe, unexplained respiratory infections, regardless of location or travel
history, and testing of healthcare workers who suffer unexplained pneumonia
after caring for patients with severe respiratory infections.

And in a related development, the Saudi
Medical Journal reported that the person who had the third known novel
coronavirus case is a 45-year-old gym teacher who visited a farm 3 days before
he got sick and who survived his severe illness despite having preexisting
health problems and only one kidney.

Update
on cases

In
reporting on cases 3 through 6 on Nov 23, the WHO said two of the confirmed
patients belonged to the same family and household in Saudi Arabia and that two
more members of the same family were sick, but their cases had not been
confirmed. The latest statement said three of the confirmed case-patients and
the person with the probable case all belong to the same family.

The statement did not specify whether
the family members are thought to have passed the virus to one another or
caught it from another source. "The source of the virus is unknown, as is
the mode of transmission," the statement says.

The cases occurred in the Jeddha and
Riyadh areas of Saudi Arabia, which are bout 850 kilometers apart, and in Doha,
Qatar, the WHO noted.

The new announcement notes only one
death from the novel coronavirus so far, a change from last week's statement
noting two deaths among the first six cases. The WHO did not respond to a query
about this point this afternoon."